Wednesday, February 15, 2017

COA clears ERC chair over allegations on AVP contract

A report of the
Commission on Audit (COA) has vindicated Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC)
Chairman Jose Vicente B. Salazar, as he was cleared of any alleged
irregularities in the reported P300,000-worth institutional audio-visual
presentation (AVP) project for the agency.

In a report signed by
State Auditor Vivencio Quiambao Jr. and Supervising Auditor Flovita Felipe, the
State audit body had debunked overtones that the supposed award of the project
had been done through a “rigged” process.

It is worth noting that
the issue tormented the ERC as a regulating agency for months – and that it
technically hostaged an entire industry because of the insinuations set off by
the late ERC Director Francisco Villa Jr. in his suicide notes.

Nevertheless, the COA
report straightforwardly stated that the AVP “was not consummated” and that no
payments were made in connection to it.

The audit body has been
among the third party entities tapped to scrutinize and investigate the ERC
following the suicide incident of the ERC official – given the allegations also
that he had penned in his suicide notes. Villa was the agency’s head of its
Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) prior to his untimely demise.

The COA noted that the
amount set aside for Luis Morelos, who’s supposed to be tapped for the AVP
production, had been unutilized, thus, the amount will revert to ERC’s coffers
“as the transaction did not materialize.”

Further in its report,
COA stipulated that “records would show that no payments were made to Mr.
Morelos,” in reference to the AVP project.

Additionally, it was
noted that the reported memorandum of agreement (MOA) engaging Morelos for consultancy
services with the ERC had been terminated two weeks after it was signed.

COA, in particular, has
stated that “no prospective bidders submitted their quotation for which it
became a failure of bidding for the first posting in the Philippine Government
Electronic Procurement System (PhilGEPS) site.

“It emphasized that the
second posting was also declared ‘a failure’ on grounds that the preparation of
the second terms of reference failed to indicate the passing rate which was a
vital information to determine the most responsive quotation.”

The State audit agency
qualified too that “there were no further actions taken by the ERC after the
two failed biddings.”